Is this the most realistic CGI you've ever seen?

Are the best computer animators only as good as the technology they use, or does natural talent distinguish their work from the rest? The question has been debated online this week after a new super-realistic computer-generated video appeared on YouTube.

At first glance, the minute-long commercial for Silestone kitchen worktops looks like slick, well-timed slow-motion footage of fruit falling in a shiny kitchen. It’s only when the peppers and pears smash like glass on the counter that it becomes clear these are not real fruit.

Alex Roman, the graphic designer who created the ad, dismisses suspicions that the shots aren’t pure computer-generated imagery&colon; “Yep, it’s all CG. I tried to put some live-footage shots but I ran out of time so CGI did the trick.”

Although computer imagery is now common in blockbuster films – it was used, for example, to create the fantasy world of Pandora that was the setting of Avatar – it is usually created by large teams using special, often bespoke equipment. Roman, however, used off-the-shelf software and worked with just one assistant to produce the advert – and did it in a mere 10 weeks. Last year he also gained internet acclaim for his realistic, entirely computer-generated film Third and Seventh.

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“This kind of talent is very exciting because you see there’s so much more to be done,” says Angus Kneale, creative director at the New York offices of The Mill, a visual effects studio. “People always say everything in CGI has been done before. This shows that’s not true.”

Raw talent?

Kneale believes what makes Roman so good is “sheer, raw, talent”. For instance, he uses tricks such as reducing the depth of focus to draw attention to certain details, which also reduces the need to carefully reproduce every last blemish on each piece of fruit in view.

Whereas most studios would need a team of people to accomplish such a project, Roman is “a master of all disciplines”, Kneale says. “Normally for that kind of quality you would need a team 10 times that size.”

Sofronis Efstathiou from the National Centre for Computer Animation in Bournemouth, UK, however, is not convinced. Although the work is impressive, he says it’s more to do with computer power than any new skills. “It’s obvious we can do quite photo-real CGI shots and no one can tell the difference. That’s been around for three or four years now.”

Kneale and Efstathiou agree on one thing, however – squeezing this level of realism from off-the-shelf software is impressive. For example, Roman used the popular Adobe Premiere package for editing the video and a special piece of rendering software – a favourite of architecture firms – to create the lighting.

Uncanny valley

Kneale says that Roman’s techniques could certainly be applied to feature films. So if the process is so quick and easy, could an artist like Roman use their skills to create a new breed of realistic, but entirely CGI movies?

“[This video] is very beautiful and very organic,” says Efstathiou. “But with characters it’s different.” Even the most sophisticated computer-generated actors still seem slightly unsettling – often attributed to the “uncanny valley” phenomenon, in which unfamiliar imperfections in an otherwise super-realistic caricature unnerve the viewer. It may seem paradoxical, but the less realistic caricatures of conventional animations can create characters that a movie audience engages with.